The Actress
by She's a Star
Summary: 'You'll keep on pretending because the show must go on.' During Hindi Sad Diamonds, the Duke and Christian watch Satine and reflect on how she deceived them.


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The Actress

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by She's a Star

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Disclaimer: Moulin Rouge is Bazzie's. I don't know who owns the song, 'cause I've never actually heard it before - I just stumbled across the lyrics and liked them. They're not mine. Nope. So let's all pretend that this is a slow, bitter, and mournful tune, shall we? *desperately hopes it's not some sort of pop ballad*

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Author's Note: Aah. My writing has fizzled. It's too overly poetic. *bursts into sobs* I think it gets better once I got used to writing. But still...I'm losing my touch, aren't I? DID I EVER HAVE A TOUCH?!?!

Erm....sorry. You can read anyway, if you like.

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Story Notes: This takes place during Hindi Sad Diamonds - I'm aware that the timing is greatly off, but the story just wouldn't work otherwise! And we wouldn't want that, now would we? With each Hindi Sad Diamonds Lyric, the point of view switches from Christian's to the Duke's.

The second sentence practically killed me. I rewrote it about 50 gazillion times, which is a bit odd, because I never rewrite if I can help it. 

Just thought you'd like to know.

*

She rises amongst the chaotic frenzy of color, and everything fades into refined sadness. Diamonds encircle thin wrists, causing her body to sparkle with an artificial radiance; her lifeless eyes study the audience with a numbed aching.

Two men watch her: one proudly in the front row, a cold smile twisting his mouth as greedy eyes hungrily drink in the sight of her. The other stands hunched behind the thick crimson curtains; a terrible aching haunts his countenance as he hides within the shadows. He was never meant to watch her.

Her voice fills the air; undercurrents of woe swim in its tragic perfection. 

**Kiss...hand...diamonds...best friend.**

Both remember the first time they saw her, the first time her song bedazzled them. One reminisces with lust, a cold possession, while the other only recalls love, and tries not to love her still.

Amongst shadows, he sings.

"_Well, you should be an actress._" His voice is soft and bitter, trembling with pent-up rage. "_You play your part so well...your act is so believable that no one else can tell._"

Her love had seemed so very genuine, and he still couldn't fathom why she would want to lead him on for so long. He could give her nothing of importance - diamonds, perfumes, anything that a woman of her stature deserved, he could not provide. He could only give her love songs and roses, and surely those wouldn't suffice.

But oh, her act had fooled him.

Destroyed him.

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Kiss...grand...diamonds...best friend.

His view of her is unobstructed from where he sits. He'd ensured that he would have the best seats; a bouquet of crimson roses sits proudly next to him to present to his diamond at the end of the performance. 

She really is a dazzling actress - every pair of eyes in the room are fixed intently on her as she sings.

God knew she'd fooled him.

He never would have believed that she loved him, had she not been so damn good at what she did. She'd given him little smiles that seemed to promise intimacy, she'd always looped her arm through his so carelessly on their outings, as though they naturally belonged next to one another. 

His eyes fixed intently on her, he sings softly.

"_You say the lines, but I see..._" He pauses, watching the woman who had managed to take his frozen heart and bash it into pieces.

With a sad sort of resignation, he finishes, "_That you don't really love me._"

Yes, she would be his. 

But he would never have her heart.

Sneering violently, he whispers, "_You keep me around to be your faithful clown till someone you can love comes along_."

Oh, he would buy her diamonds. He would shower her with gifts and jewels, but he would make sure that she would never love again, not like she'd loved that blasted writer.

He would return to her the pain that she had inflicted upon him.

Pain that he wasn't supposed to feel. 

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Men...cold...girls...old...

A storm erupts in his gray blue eyes as they follow her every move, wondering vaguely if she always looked that cold. Right now, on that stage, drowning in blue light, she looks so incapable of love. Why had he ever believed that she had loved him? 

He saw her now as she always had been and always would be, and he knew that he had just been a passing amusement to fill some twisted desire.

Nothing more.

And still he wondered why. He hadn't paid her, he didn't have anything for her. And when she had kissed him, it felt so real.

He glances at her, pain reflecting in his eyes. 

It was all a game, a sick, twisted, elaborate game, and she had won.

"_You'll keep on pretending,_" he sings bitterly. "_Because the show must go on._"

The show must go on. How many times had he heard it without awknowledging it, just thinking it to be a silly mantra of Zidler's? 

He had always feared Zidler slightly - yes, he looked to be the jolly, fatherly type, never without a jovial chuckle and a festive grin. But there was a ruthlessness in his eyes, a ruthlessness for power and wealth that Christian had never considered Satine to possess.

But apparently, she did.

And her show would go on without him.

"_Yes, you should be an actress,_" he whispers, almost maliciously, as he watches the dim light cast shades of violet in her crimson hair. "_As lovely as you are; the way you play on emotion, you'd shame the brightest star._"

In silence, he watches.

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And we all lose our charms in the end...

He knows that he can control her.

She was nothing more than a little girl: she had proved that the night before. She was hopeless in his hands, capable of nothing more than tears and pleading.

Before, she had always seemed simply perfect. She had possessed no flaws, no weaknesses. She was a porcelain doll, a shell of a woman, someone who did not feel and did not care.

He had seen so much of himself in her until last night. Until she had fallen from grace.

Now he knows that she is weak, and all his hopes have tarnished. She feels, just as anyone else should feel. 

She is not really his soulmate, or his kindred spirit, or whatever silly thing he had once believed her to be. 

She merely lives her life upon an imaginary stage, saying and doing all the right things that will make someone believe that she has never cared before until they stepped into her life. 

He now knows that all her touches had caused her to cringe inwardly. All her words were lies.

"_You're acting all the time,_" he hissed up at her regal frame as she performed. "_No, you're not really mine._"

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**Diamonds are a...**

He now shakes with anger and hurt as he watches her, leaning, unnoticed, against the crimson curtain that will close soon; and in closing, will symbolize not only the end of the act, but the end of the cherished love they'd supposedly possessed.

"_I'm just another scene in your play-acting scheme,_" he screamed out, accusing. "_No, you don't love me at all!_"

She has destroyed him. He was once a starry-eyed poet, naive to the hardships of the world, but knowing of love and beauty in a way that most don't in their entire lives. Now he watches her with a maddened glint in his eye like a tiger waiting to make its kill; jealousy has destroyed him. 

Love has ruined him.

She has torn him apart.

And still he hopes.

He wishes the hope away with all the strength that he possesses. He wants to slaughter the hope the way that she has slaughtered his soul, quickly and without a trace of guilt. 

But it will not leave him.

And as long as she stands upon that stage, singing in a voice that is so familiar and yet unlike anything he's ever heard, the hope still flickers. It is the weakest of flames, but still it faintly illuminates his soul.

He wants nothing more than to tear his eyes from her so that he can hope no more.

"_When you walk away,_ _that's when the curtain will fall._"

So in agony, he waits.

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Diamonds are a...

He cannot help but loathe himself at his sick devotion to her.

Even after she's proved herself to be nothing more than a lowly whore, enamored with some writer and not with him, he still finds himself wanting her. Craving her.

He is tired of her. He wants her gone; out of his life, out of his mind, out of his heart.

And yet she stays, tragically beautiful as she was on the night when he first saw her...descending from the sky like a goddess, chained in diamonds and somehow looking so utterly above the rest of the world.

He wishes he could leave...

"_But I'll go all the way to the end of the play._"

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Diamonds are a...

He fights back tears; his voice is strangled and raw as he stares out at her and promises spitefully, "_I'll be a part of your masquerade_."

_I love a little poetry after supper...Love is just a game...You're going to be bad for business, I can tell...But a life without love, that's terrible!...We have to end it...I love you...I am the Hindu courtesan, and I choose the Maharaja._

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Diamonds are a...

There is a sort of acceptance in his eyes now as he watches diamonds encircle her fragile neck. She has cast her spell on him - the siren has enraptured him with her song, and now he simply must watch her, wondering what the future holds.

"_Although I know it may be the saddest show in the life of a fool on parade._"

_Monsieur, how wonderful of you to take time out of your busy schedule to visit...There's a power in you that scares me...Oh, my dear, sweet Duke, there are so many lines to learn...Those silly writers let their imaginations run away with them...The boy has a ridiculous obsession with me...We need him, but only until tomorrow night..._

And as she steps forward, voice like velvet as the last few words spill from her lips, both men watch her with one hunger in their eyes.

**Girl's...best...friend.**

FIN


End file.
